maybe you want [\\\&]{0,2}

Update Thinking about it... if you are trying to match \& only.. and not &\ \\ or && then you probably really want... (?:\\&)? which will match the string \& 0 or 1 times, and not capture it (?:)

                - Ant
                - Some of my best work - (1 2 3)

I try that and get complete failure (the regex doesn't match at all).

That second grouping has some odd stuff going on in there; you start a character class, but have another one embedded inside it and it looks like you're also trying to use quantifiers in there, then you have an unescaped - which attempts to specify that you're seeking to match a range between what goes before and what goes after.

So let's step back one square: what kinds of things are you trying to match?

Presented with *this* example, I'd go much simpler and do:

if ( $x=~ /([^.]+)\.(\S+)/ ) { ... }
[download]

Unless those patterns are too forgiving ...

I mistrust all systematizers and avoid them. The will to a system shows a lack of integrity -- F. Nietzsche

So let's step back one square: what kinds of things are you trying to match?

Trying to match: client.project.subproject where:

• Client and project are manditory. Subproject is optional but, there could be more than one.
• Client, project and subproject could contain, letters, numbers, _, -, or \&
Does that help?

Update:Actually your regex /([^.]+)\.(\S+)/ works well. Thank you.

Neil Watson
watson-wilson.ca

OK, to match those possible characters (and only those) try something like

m/((?:\w|\\\&|\-)*)\.((?:\w|\\\&|\-)*)/
[download]

the \w takes care of letters, numbers and _. I always escape the - out of habit but is unnecessary. The /i is redundant since the \w is case insensitive.
Personally I would do a nongreedy match. It will match other characters but it probably won't matter. Something like:

m/(.*?)\.(.*)/
[download]

update -- of course a simple split would do the trick.

my ($client, $project, $subproject) = split /\./, $x;
[download]

--

flounder

Arturo is right -- I don't see how anything is getting assigned to $project, since the match does not succeed at all for the initial example.

Trying to match: client.project.subproject where:

• Client and project are manditory. Subproject is optional but, there could be more than one.
• Client, project and subproject could contain, letters, numbers, _, -, or \&

Update:Actually your regex ... works well. Thank you.

Arturo's regex will include both your project and all sub-projects in $2. If that's okay, fine. If not, do it like this:

  /([^.]+)\.([^.]+)/
[download]

$x = 'o\&a.sysadm';

if ($x =~ m/^(\w+(?:\\\&)?-?\w*)\.((?:\w+\\?(?:\\\&)?-?\w*\.?)+)/i){
    $client = $1;
    $project = $2;
}
[download]

-- Mike

--
just,my${.02}